经济学人精读|关于人为什么会轻信谎言

本文节选自《经济学人》的一篇文章，介绍了跟谎言有关的研究

本文共节选5段，建议大家先自主阅读原文，再学习精读笔记。

文末会总结此次学习写作可以使用的词句，读者也可自己总结。会定期将内容进行总结，做成word分享，希望大家也能坚持学习

In 2001 Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University, published a paper in Psychological Review delightfully entitled “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail”. He argued that when people make moral decisions, they are influenced by emotion, or what might also be termed intuition. They may think they are weighing evidence but in fact their decisions are made in the blink of an eye. The reasons they give afterwards merely reflect these emotions, like a dog wagging its tail.

entitle：使有权利，这里是另一个意思，entitle sth 表示给……命名【词汇积累】

argue：主张，认为，可以和think, reckon 进行替换，都表示认为，主张【同义替换】

moral decisions：道德决策

are influenced by：被……影响，也可以说under the influence of sth，或者be affected by，or be subject to【同义替换】

be termed intuition：被称为直觉，be termed sth被称为……【词组积累】

weigh evidence：分析证据，weigh 有权衡，认真考虑的意思【搭配】

in the blink of an eye：在一瞬间，眨眼间【词组积累】

merely：仅仅，只不过

2001年，纽约大学的心理学家Jonathan Haid在《心理学评论》发表了一篇文章，并开心地命名为“情绪化的狗和它理性的尾巴”。他认为当人们在做道德决策时，他们会被感情所影响，他们或许会认为他们在权衡证据，但事实上，他们的决定仅在一瞬间就决定了。他们后来给出的理由仅仅反映了情感，就像狗在摇尾巴。

Others have taken similar views. “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” wrote David Hume, a philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, in 1739. But the lessons of Mr Haidt’s essay are particularly apt at a time when lying has come to define politics more than usual.

take similar views：采取了相似的观点，我们也可以说hold similar views. 【同义替换】

the slave of the passions：情感的奴隶，passion可以是激情，英文翻译为a very strong feeling of love, hatred, anger, enthusiasm, etc. 所以应该是强烈情感的奴隶【搭配】

apt at sth：善于……【词组积累】

more than usual：比平时更多

其他人有相似的观点，1739年的苏格兰启蒙运动哲学家David Hume写道“理由是，也只应该是，情感的奴隶”。但Haidt文章的道理比以往更善于定义政治。

Why isn’t lying more damaging? One possibility is that lying on a Trumpian scale is so unusual—so frequent, shameless and easily falsified—that people do not know how to react. In tests, between two-thirds and three-quarters of people say they never lie; most of the rest claim to lie fewer than five times a day. It is hard to comprehend someone who goes so far beyond normal, occasional deceitfulness.

lie on a Trumpian scale：在……的级别上说谎

falsify：捏造，伪造

claim to lie：claim to do 声称做……【词组积累】

goes so far beyond normal：远超寻常，即so unusual

occasional deceitfulness：偶尔的谎言

为什么说谎损害没那么大，一个可能性是trump那种级别的慌是那么的不同寻常—如此频繁，无耻，容易伪造—人们不知道如何应对。在检测中，有2/3到3/4之间的人说，他们从未说过谎，大多数剩余的人也声称，他们一天说谎少于5次，理解那些不同寻常的人偶尔的欺骗，是很困难的。

But even in daily life, without the paticular pressures of politics, people find it hard to spot liars. Tim Levine of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, has spent decades running tests that allow participants to cheat. He then asks them on camera if they have played fair. He asks others to look at the recordings and decide who is being forthright about cheating and who is covering it up. In 300 such tests people got it wrong about half of the time, no better than a random coin toss. Few people can detect a liar. Even those whose job is to conduct interviews to dig out hidden truths, such as police officers or intelligence agents, are no better than ordinary folk.

find it hard to：发现做……很难

spot liars：发现说谎的人，spot有注意和发现的意思。下文detect a liar：也表示发现说谎的人

【词汇积累】

run tests：运行测试

play fair：规规矩矩比赛；光明正大的行动

being forthright about sth：对……坦诚

cover it up掩盖……【词组积累】

no better than a random coin toss：比扔硬币好到哪里去。【地道表达】

conduct interviews：进行采访、面瘫，conduct作为名词时行为，举止，作动词则表示实施、执行。下文中还有conduct tests，表示进行实验【搭配】

dig out hidden truths：挖出隐藏的事实【地道表达】

intelligence agents：情报员

ordinary folk：平民

但即使是日常生活，没有特别的政治压力，人们发现找出撒谎者很难。阿拉巴马大学伯明翰分校的Tim Levine进行了可以允许参与者撒谎的测试。随后，他通过相机问他们是否公平的进行。他让大家看着记录，并判断谁对自己骗人持坦诚的态度，而谁在试图掩盖。在300例这样的测试中，人们有一半的时间都错了，比扔硬币好不到哪里去。很少有人可以发现说谎者。即使某些人的工作是进行面谈来挖出事实，例如警察和情报员，他们比平民也好不了多少。

So strong is that instinct that people suspend their critical faculties when given orders by a superior. The point was made by one of the most famous experiments in psychology, the “obedienceto authority” test conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1961. Subjects were (falsely) told that they were taking part in a test that required them to administer electric shocks to another participant (who was an actor). As the test proceeded, they were willing to give shocks so large that the impact would have been fatal had they been real. The normal interpretation is that people are willing to behaveunconscionably if they can tell themselves they were merely “following orders”. But Mr Levineraises another possibility: they may well have had doubts that the experiment was real, but not sufficient to override what he calls the “truth default”.

So strong is that instinct that……：那个本能是如此强大以至于【句式】

suspend one’s critical faculties：批判能力，faculty表示能力，天赋，suspend表示暂停发挥某种能力【搭配】

obedience：服从

administer electric shocks to：对……施行电击，administer表示给予，施用（药物等）to give drugs, medicine, etc. to sb，或者administer a kick, a punch, etc. (to sb/sth)踢；打to kick or to hit sb/sth。administer有一种强制施行的感觉，可以搭配一些不好的行为。下文还用了give shocks to来和administer进行替换【搭配】

proceed：继续进行

they were willing to give shocks so large that the impact would have been fatal had they been real：他们愿意施行如此高强度的电击，以至于如果是真的的话，甚至是致命的。基本句式为so……that 句式+would have been …… had sth been……的虚拟句式，例如，the weather was so cold that the temperature would have been fatal had the girl been naked.

so……that简述了基本情况，would have been表示虚拟句会发生什么，had sth been，是虚拟句的条件，即在某种基本情况下，在某个条件时，会发生什么。【句式】

unconscionably：unconscionable违背良心的

raise another possibility：提出了另一种可能性【搭配】

override：比……重要，凌驾【词汇积累】

那个本能是如此强大，以至于当他们被上级下了指令时，暂缓了自己的批判能力。这个观点是由最著名的心理学实验得出的。“服从权威”实验由心理学家米尔格伦在1961年实施的。他们被告知的主题是，参与一个实验，并要求他们对另一个参与者进行电击（是一个演员），随着实验进行，他们愿意施行如此高强度的电击，以至于如果是真的的话，甚至是致命的。正常的解释是人们愿意违背良心，如果他们对自己说他们仅仅只是“服从命令”。但Levine提出了另一个可能性：他们或许也曾怀疑过实验的真实性，但还不足以凌驾他所称之为的“事实缺损”。

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总结